Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security

SOE (Special Operations Executive)

█ CARYN E. NEUMANN

A World War II-era British secret service division, the Special Operations
Executive (SOE), formed on July 19, 1940, to coordinate subversion and
sabotage in enemy-occupied countries. SOE agents distributed propaganda,
blew up bridges, directed air strikes, destroyed factories, and taught
resistance tactics. Most of SOE's success came in France,
Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy, although it also conducted major operations
in Albania, Abyssinia, Belgium, Burma, China, Denmark, Hungary, Malaya,
Norway, Poland, Romania, Siam (present-day Thailand), Turkey, and the
Dutch East Indies. SOE disbanded on January 15, 1946, with many of its
agents moving to MI6.

With the fall of France in 1940, SOE received authorization to begin
operations to divert German, Italian, and Japanese attention away from the
main fighting fronts towards the rear areas. The division, with
headquarters scattered throughout London, developed three branches: SO1
for propaganda, SO2 for active operations, and SO3 for planning.
Resistance movements had already formed
in occupied countries, and it fell to SOE to finance, supply, and direct
these operations. It did not operate effectively in the main enemy
homelands of Germany and Japan because the locals were too unfriendly and
the police too strong.

In order to achieve its goals, SOE relied upon 470 agents, 117 of whom
died in action. The agents generally parachuted behind the lines to teach
unarmed combat, bomb building, and espionage strategies to resistance
fighters, but a number were pulled from the criminal ranks to supply
expertly forged documents. SOE's greatest success may have been the
1942 bombing of a Norwegian plant that supplied heavy water (deuterium
oxide) to Germany for use in developing an atomic bomb. Another notable
achievement came when SOE agents guided a Royal Air Force attack on
Gestapo headquarters in Denmark that permitted one prisoner escaping from
the rubble to pick up a file of the names of Danish collaborators to be
used as evidence at treason trials after the war. SOE so succeeded in
harassing the Axis powers that they pulled troops from the front lines and
sent them to guard railways, storage depots, and factories, while the
British in contrast simply relied upon old men to protect these
facilities.

An accurate measure of SOE's impact is difficult. The requirements
of clandestine work meant that SOE agents rarely left written records, and
those few official papers that do exist have been classified secret by the
British government. The little that is known about the division marks it
as a success.

█ FURTHER READING:

BOOKS:

Foot, M.R.D.
SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive
1940–46.
London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984.